‘Mars at Sunrise,’ Directed by Jessica Habie

Mars at Sunrise

In “Mars at Sunrise,” Ali Suliman plays a Palestinian artist who confronts an Israeli soldier who once tortured him.Credit
Eyes Infinite Films

Opens on Friday in Manhattan.

Directed by Jessica Habie

In English, Hebrew, Yiddish, Russian, Persian and Arabic, with English subtitles.

1 hour 15 minutes; not rated

Addressing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict through stylized compositions, nontraditional narrative and a stripped-down aesthetic, Jessica Habie’s “Mars at Sunrise” distills a war among many to a single, devastating duel.

The foes are Khaled (Ali Suliman), a Palestinian artist, and Eyal (Guy El Hanan), the Israeli soldier who once detained and tortured him. While giving a lift to a young Jewish American poet (Haale Gafori) on her first visit to Israel, Khaled is shocked to encounter Eyal at a checkpoint and recalls the story of his interrogation. This setup is simple, but what follows is less so: an impressionistic battle between imagination and brute force that too often veers from enlightening to exasperating.

Told through memories and dreams, poems and paintings, this experimental first feature (partly based on the life of the exiled artist Hani Zurob) uses spare, playlike scenes to illustrate the power of art to shore up the spirit. Time lines snap and blur, thoughts are made manifest, and actions are increasingly open to interpretation. And by giving Eyal his own suppressed artistic urges, Ms. Habie ensures that our sympathies are finally more fluid than the situation would seem to demand.

Though the film’s abstractions can alienate, and intellectual connections are sometimes paid for in drained emotional heat, “Mars at Sunrise” is a thoughtful and inventive look at a seemingly endless war. More than anything, the ambivalence written into the roles — and poignantly captured by the performers — seems to suggest that while taking sides is not impossible, it is almost certainly fruitless.